A strong concept and refined detailing bring unity to this second-floor living space. The owners, a photographer and his wife, asked Jay Serrao, AIA, to create a lively kitchen, dining area, and living room that would flex for entertaining.

Unlike politics, architecture has second acts. This original kitchen was outdated, extremely dark, and cut off from the rest of the house, says Ralph Cunningham, but it's reincarnated as a light-filled space with a felicitous floor-plan flow.

Two language barriers confronted architect Frederick Stelle when he began renovating this lakefront house in Zurich, Switzerland. A German-speaking Swiss associate in his office solved the obvious one. But the existing visual expressions were more difficult to sort through.

Can you really squeeze a family of four and their Aspen accoutrement into an 1,100-square-foot condominium renovation? No problem, says architect Scott Lindenau. Well, the masonry block construction, low ceilings, and paucity of windows were a conundrum, but you wouldn't know it by the...